The Fugitive Queen (7 page)

“True enough, lass,” he said to her, “but t'sheep don't need all that much shepherding. They know their own ranges and t'owd yowes teach their lambs. They won't stray off t'land they know or get mixed up wi' other flocks. Shepherds mostly knows where t'look when they want to find t'flock.”

He had a strong northern accent but Pen, inclining her head and paying close attention, managed to follow him and said: “But how clever! I didn't think sheep were as clever as that!”

A moment later, when the guide had gone ahead to lead us through a place where several tracks met, Meg said to her: “I couldn't understand him very well. What did he say, Pen?”

Pen told her, and then repeated her question about whether the hills could be called mountains. “Almost,” I said. “But proper mountains are even higher. I've seen them in Wales.”

After that, because having once emerged from her sulks, she couldn't very well sink back into them, Pen was easier company, though still at times inclined to be prickly.

“She'll get over it,” said Sybil to me when we had found an inn at Glossop and she and I chanced to be alone together in the parlor. “New things to see and do will probably work wonders. I hope that we do find a good man for her in the north. It's what she needs.”

“I hope she doesn't go and fall in love with Harry Hobson or Tom Smith,” I said worriedly, but Sybil shook her head.

“So far it's always been older men, the kind she can look up to. Hobson and Smith are far too boyish for her—and well beneath her socially as well. She does have a sense of her position, you know. She's far from being a fool. She's just young, and at the mercy of longings she doesn't understand yet.”

I looked at Sybil with affection. She was in her forties and by no means a beautiful woman, for the proportions of her face were wrong for that. They looked as though her features had been compressed between crown and chin. Her eyebrows swept out and upward too far beyond the corners of her eyes, and her nostrils were too splayed. Yet it was a face full of character, and the dark eyes under the remarkable eyebrows were always kind. “You understand young girls,” I said.

“I have a grown-up daughter,” said Sybil simply. “You'll be the same, when Meg is a little older.”

The approaching voices of Pen and Meg, talking to each other, obliged us to change the subject. I said: “If we make good time tomorrow, I should think we would reach Tyesdale the day after.”

 • • • 

Finding the way beyond Glossop presented a difficulty. Our guide had reached the limit of his range and could be of no more use to us, while the innkeeper was only mildly helpful. He was a stumpy fellow with a red face, probably due to too much of his own ale. Nay, he had no one he could spare to send with us in the morning; happen there was all to do for a fair in the town, wi' folk coming in from all about to sell their beasts and produce and he needed all his hands at home. Nay, he'd not heard of either Tyesdale or Fritton but he could direct us to Mossley.
After that we'd need to ask again. Road were rough but not hard to follow.

“Happen you miss your way, ask at a farm somewhere. They'll know at t'farms. Stop there overnight if you need to—no one'll refuse a drink of milk and a mouthful of bread and porridge. We're hospitable folk in these parts,” he told us, giving us a grin from a mouthful of blackened teeth and leering at Pen. I saw young Hobson bristle. He seemed rather to like Pen, I thought, and sighed inwardly. It was bad enough worrying in case Pen fell for one of the men but I didn't want new complications in the form of them mooning after her instead.

We set off hopefully the next day, and at first all went well. Before midday we found ourselves in a village that wasn't Mossley but did at least have a modest inn where we could eat and rest the horses, and the landlord, more helpful than his counterpart in Glossop, assured us that we were going in the right direction. Mossley wasn't that much farther, we learned, and yes, he had heard of both Tyesdale Manor and Fritton Parish.

“Not that we see much of t'folk from those parts, but they come through now and again when there's a fair at Glossop.” He gave us directions, though they were a trifle confusing. To make sure we were on the right road for Mossley, we were to watch out for a bewildering list of landmarks including a lightning-blasted oak and a ruined cottage. Once we were past Mossley, we should look for the outlaw Dickson Morley a-swingin' in his chains from an elm at a crossroad, and there the innkeeper thought that we should bear right—“half right, not full right; there's tracks for both”—and after that, it would be a matter of asking the way from whatever farms we came across. “But they'll knaw t'way, reet enough. Happen you'll be in Tyesdale by nightfall, God willing.”

“Ah, but which night?” inquired Tom Smith pessimistically. I told him not to be depressing.

From then on, however, the road grew narrower and rougher, winding up and down the flanks of steep hills and moors. We found Mossley and rode through it, found the hanged outlaw and bore half right as instructed, but we were no longer
making good time and Pen had fallen quiet again, and not, I thought, because her sulks had come back. This silence had a different quality.

As we made our way across a lonely moorland, so high and near to the drifting puffs of cloud that it felt as though we were riding across a colossal roof, I grew seriously concerned about her, and bringing Roundel alongside her, I said: “Pen? Are you feeling all right?”

“I've started my course,” said Pen dismally.

“I thought so,” I said. “I've seen you like this before. I'm sorry.”

I had found out soon after Pen joined us from Lockhill that she was one of that unlucky band of women who have a truly difficult time once a month, when she was liable to violent cramps. I sympathized, for although I did not suffer in that particular way, I was prone to migraine headaches and they were more likely at those times. I knew that Pen needed rest.

I was anxious about the weather, too. The clouds were thickening and I had felt a few drops of rain. Ryder and Brockley now halted us, urging us all to get cloaks out of our baggage. Wet weather wouldn't be good for any of us, but above all it would be bad for Pen and also for Fran Dale, who took cold easily and especially when she was tired.

I spoke to Brockley and Ryder, telling them that Dale was exhausted and Pen not well, a polite euphemism that they immediately understood. Brockley pointed out a thin stream of hearth smoke in the distance, off to our left. “There's a house of some sort over there, madam. Maybe we could stop there overnight and finish the journey tomorrow.”

We found a narrow track leading toward the place, but it was farther than we expected and the rain was coming down hard before we got there. When we did, what we found was discouraging. It was a thick-walled stone farmhouse huddling under the lee of a hill. Moss grew in the crevices of the stone and on the battered slate roof. The doors were low and the windows had shutters, but not a single pane of glass. “It looks more like a cave than a home,” Tom Smith muttered.

It was true that the north country had a tradition of being willing to take travelers in. The inhabitants of the farmhouse didn't greet us effusively but they didn't turn us away either. Tom Smith's remark about a cave was fair comment, for inside, the farmhouse was so dark that we could scarcely see the faces of its occupants. One of them lit a frugal rush light, in fact, so as to take a look at us, and I sensed that this, to them, was a rare extravagance in the daytime.

Our hosts were the farmer—a short, unsmiling boulder of a man—and his wife, who might have been buxom if better fed, two grown sons with a marked resemblance to their father, and an aged woman whom the wife addressed as Mother. On account of the weather, the men had been occupying themselves in the byre, which virtually meant that they were in the house, for of its two ground-level rooms, one was a kitchen and living room combined, with pots over the fireplace and three hams hanging from the rafters, while the other was a byre for horses and cows. The men helped to make our animals comfortable there, while the women found benches and stools in the living room for us all, and the wife put a rack in front of her cooking fire and hung our damp cloaks on it to dry.

Presently, there was a meal, which we shared. The food consisted of a thick stew with beans and onions in it, and slices cut from one of the hams and fried. I noticed that between us all, we accounted for most of the ham in question, leaving the family only two. There was rye bread, too, with some kind of dripping. We were offered ale or milk to drink. It was all done with apparent willingness, and yet there was a dour edge.

“Happen thee've coom oop from t'south?” said the farmer, in a tone that implied faintly but unmistakably that he wished people from the south would stay there and not come knocking on his door and eating his provender.

I understood. This was a poor household. I told him that we realized that the arrival of ten people and their animals was a strain on their resources. We wouldn't have sought shelter there, except for the weather and the fact that Pen and Dale were too exhausted from traveling to go farther that day. I added that we
would of course pay for our lodgings just as we would at any inn. The wife, who evidently had a friendly nature, demurred here but her mother dug an elbow into her ribs and her husband said: “Hush, lass,” quite roughly.

Money, though, couldn't solve their immediate problem, which was to provide for us all and still have enough food left for themselves, until they could buy more from a market or a neighbor. We'd be off first thing in the morning, I promised, and when Sybil saw the younger woman getting out flour and yeast and preparing to make more bread, she offered to help.

The family, whose name turned out to be Grimsdale, were mildly curious when we asked about the way to Tyesdale. “Aye, I knows the place,” the farmer said. “In Fritton Parish, that'll be—the next parish to this. There's no master at Tyesdale now, though; nobbut a steward. Owner's away down south.”

I explained that Tyesdale had changed hands. Pen was now its owner, I said, and we had come to help her take possession of it. “And find her a Yorkshire husband!” piped up Meg, rather pertly.

“What—round here?” The elder of the two sons laughed. “Most o' t'folk in the big houses are Catholic hereabouts, even t'ones that pretend not to be. That won't suit, will it?”

“It will suit very well, provided there's no disloyal talk,” I said.

The lad laughed again. “Well, there's the Moss boys, over north of Tyesdale, but they're promised to two of the Holme girls—your neighbors to the northeast, they'll be; all in Fritton Parish. There's three more Holme girls to settle and their mam reckons she's got first refusal of every likely lad for miles. If me brother and me were a bit nearer to gentry, she'd be sinking her claws in us. She could come to it yet!”

“Meg, you chatter too much,” I said reprovingly. In my memory, something had stirred. “Holme—the family don't live at a place called Lapwings, by any chance, do they?”

“Aye, that'll be them. So thee knows them?”

“No, no—by chance, I've heard of them, that's all.”

Heard
was the wrong word. I had seen the name written down on a list. It was a list that had belonged to Mary Stuart, and three years ago, when I traveled to Scotland, part of my purpose
had been to make sure that its latest version didn't reach her, for the names on it were those of families in England who supported her claim to the throne and would offer help if she ever made a bid for it; the more inaccurate her information on that subject was, the happier the English government would be. The updated list, happily, was destroyed before it got to Mary, but I had seen the original one, and since I had a good memory, I could recall many of the items on it. I could call up this particular entry in my mind.
Thomas Holme of Lapwings. Twenty miles from Bolton and about fifty miles from York. Not wealthy but would lend sword arm and horses.

Ah, well. Mary, mewed up in Bolton wasn't likely to ask the Holmes to redeem their promise, and I needn't worry about them from that point of view. The locality didn't sound very rich in prospective bridegrooms, I thought, but we could cast more widely than the immediate district. I might hear of a likely prospect when I visited Bolton, and as I had said to Hugh, we could always take Pen home again if necessary.

The rain stopped after supper and the menfolk went outdoors again, to make use, presumably, of the light summer evening to finish whatever tasks the rain had interrupted earlier. The farmer's wife showed us to a room under the roof and we went to bed early.

We slept, all of us, in our clothes. The bedding consisted of fleeces with cloths thrown over them—on the grubby side and somewhat overwarm. Most of us fell asleep quickly, though, especially Dale, who was worn-out. Pen, however, was restless, and I too lay awake for some time, worrying about her.

In the morning, the weather was dull and misty but looked as though it would improve later. Pen, however, was pale with pain and unable to rise. There was no question whatever of getting her into the saddle that day.

 • • • 

“We can't all stay here,” I said as we conferred in the attic chamber. “I suspect that these people just won't have enough to go round. Some of us at least have got to get out of the way.”

“Fran and I can stay with Pen, madam,” Brockley offered. “Fran will be the better of a full day's rest. Mistress Penelope will be better soon, I take it,” he added in lower tones.

“She'll be all right by the end of today; she always is,” Sybil said. “I'd stay, gladly, but if Dale is tired, then perhaps she should take the chance of breaking the journey. Brockley could bring them both to Tyesdale tomorrow. What do you think, Mistress Stannard?”